Mark Richards is a sociologist who has lived in a variety of District neighborhoods
(Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights, Kalorama, Georgetown, Dupont Circle) for 15 years.He currently lives in Dupont East near the
17th Street Strip, and works as senior associate at Bisconti
Research, Inc., an opinion research firm, in Woodley Park.Richards was born in Pennsylvania, and has lived in North Carolina; Kentucky; Paris
and Strasbourg, France; Bouaké, Ivory Coast; and Tombouctou and Diré, Mali.He speaks French.Richards authored Making Up Our Mind in a Democratic Age:A Review of the Social Science Literature on Land
Use Decision Making, (June 1994);
Searching for Environmental Justice in a Democratic Age:Review of the Discourse on Environmental
Inequality, (July 1996); Case Study
of Neighborhood Identity: Washington, D.C.s Dupont East Neighborhood (April
1997); How a Modern Electricity Company Went
to the Roots of Democracy to Build Public Trust (September 1997); and Struggle for Democracy: A Local Sociopolitical History
of Washington, D.C. (1998). He also developed a series of fact sheets on
DC, and is writing Hope and Delusion in the Nations Capital: Struggle for
Democracy in the District of Columbia, his doctoral thesis for The Union
Institute, which he is doing for fun.